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Trevor Noah Knows What’s Keeping Trump So Healthy: “Dictator Blood”

“Castro, Mugabe, the Queen—we’re all shocked at how long they live,” Noah joked Tuesday night on The Daily Show. “After the nuclear apocalypse, Trump is going to be the only one walking around, giving speeches to cockroaches.”

If you’ve spent the last day or so scratching your head over Donald Trump’s apparently clean bill of health, the comedians of late night are right there with you.

On Tuesday, White House physician Ronny Jackson spoke with reporters for about an hour, detailing the president’s physical and mental health. The verdict? He’s healthy and mentally sound. The news stunned some reporters, including one who asked how Trump could be in such good physical condition despite his notoriously poor diet and low-activity lifestyle. Jackson’s answer was genetics, but Trevor Noah had a slightly different thought as he reacted to the news on Tuesday’s Daily Show.

“Look, to be honest, I’m not really surprised, man,” Noah said. “Donald Trump has dictator blood. We’re used to this in Africa and in other places in the world: Castro, Mugabe,the Queen. We’re all shocked at how long they live. After the nuclear apocalypse, Trump is going to be the only one walking around, giving speeches to cockroaches.”

The portion of Jackson’s testimony that seemed to alarm Noah the most was the (humorous) idea that if Trump maintained a healthier diet and exercise regimen, he could have lived to be 200 years old. “My god!” Noah said. “If you think Trump is racist at 71, imagine how racist he’ll be when he’s 200!” Also worrisome? The idea that Trump is truly mentally sound—”because that means he’s doing all of this shit on purpose,” Noah said. “You covfefe in your normal mind?! Because to us, the non-experts, the only thing that looks healthy about Donald Trump is that he’s shaped like a food pyramid. To say that his health is excellent, it’s like medicine is gaslighting us now.”

Stephen Colbert was downright skeptical of Jackson’s findings, noting during his opening Late Show monologue, “With the president being six foot three, 239, according to the body mass index by the federal Health and Human Services Department, Trump is overweight and just one pound shy of obesity. One pound short of being obese. That’s . . . awfully convenient.” (Truthfully, the body mass index has repeatedly been shown to be a poor measure of health anyway, as it takes no measure of relevant factors beyond simple height and weight.) Still, Colbert couldn’t help but imagine a little scenario: “Listen, doc,” he said in his best Trump voice, “I don’t wanna be obese, but I feel like this wad of cash is about one pound. Why don’t you take that off my hands and weigh me again, O.K.?”

And then there was Jimmy Kimmel, who took a different approach, shooting his own doctor’s report in which the news was a little more dire: Trump’s hair, a fake doctor said in a pre-taped clip, has taken over his brain.

“Our tests have discovered that the chemical used in his preferred shade of Just for Men, which is Burnt Marshmallow, has combined with the high levels of French-fry oil in his blood to create a hair parasite, or ‘hairasite,’” the “doctor” said. To some, that diagnosis is probably more believable than the real one.